When mission societies received the circular on 2 August 1954 notifying them that they had to make a choice about the future of their schools, they were given a deadline of the end of that year to make a decision. As Richard Elphick indicates, most missions, with the exception of the Catholics, ‘capitulated’ in the face of the crippling expense confronting them if they chose to maintain control. The process and path taken in each mission still need careful dissection and comparison with that discussed here. In the case of the Hermannsburg Mission, the decision was taken to transfer control to the state to ensure the continuance of the schools. However, the process of transfer did not take place as quickly or in as clear-cut a manner as envisaged. Although the missions were barely able to continue their financial support of the schools, they wished to retain influence concerning the specifically moral or Christianising mission of their schools. Formal compliance with official directives did not always translate into practical compliance, however, and so the transfer process was in many cases protracted. Eventually, missions did end up retaining a degree of control in attenuated form, some right into the 1980s. But this control was accompanied by considerable contestation on the part of Africans too.

The Hermannsburg Mission's negotiations in Natal and Zululand can be seen to fit into three distinct periods – the first around the making of the decision in 1954–55, the second until the end of the decade, and the third through the 1960s. These periods correspond to changes in the nature and implementation of apartheid. The Bantu Authorities Act (No. 68 of 1951) provided the regulatory framework for the spatialised control envisaged in the 1953 Bantu Education Act, and shaped the politics of transfer until the late 1950s. As contradictions surfaced and resistance escalated, the position of the National Party hardened. The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act (No. 46 of 1959) thus initiated the second phase: it provided for the reconstitution of the former reserves as self-governing Bantustans and later as independent homelands on an ethnic basis.